How do you specify a byte literal in Java?

java byte literals
Charbel picture Charbel · Mar 4, 2011 · Viewed 153.7k times · Source

If I have a method 

void f(byte b);

how can I call it with a numeric argument without casting?

f(0);

gives an error.

Answer

Robin picture Robin · Mar 4, 2011

You cannot. A basic numeric constant is considered an integer (or long if followed by a "L"), so you must explicitly downcast it to a byte to pass it as a parameter. As far as I know there is no shortcut.

Related questions

Java binary literals - Value -128 for byte

Since SE 7 Java allows to specify values as binary literal. The documentation tells me 'byte' is a type that can hold 8 Bit of information, the values -128 to 127. Now i dont know why but i cannot define 8 bits but only 7 …

Read More
How do I initialize a byte array in Java?

I have to store some constant values (UUIDs) in byte array form in java, and I'm wondering what the best way to initialize those static arrays would be. This is how I'm currently doing it, but I feel like there …

Read More
Java Byte Array to String to Byte Array

I'm trying to understand a byte[] to string, string representation of byte[] to byte[] conversion... I convert my byte[] to a string to send, I then expect my web service (written in python) to echo the data straight back to …

Read More